Augusta limits employee involvement in mayor prayer breakfasts

Mayor responds to legal threats

The city of Augusta is limiting employee involvement in Mayor Deke Copenhaver’s monthly prayer breakfasts in response to threats of litigation from a Wisconsin-based group that champions the separation of church and state.

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In a letter Thursday to Rebecca Markert, the attorney for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Augusta general counsel Andrew MacKenzie said Copenhaver has agreed to have “private sponsors” organize, coordinate and promote the breakfasts.

The sponsors will take on duties now performed by Copenhaver’s executive assistant, Karyn Nixon. The city’s response to an earlier open-records request from the Freedom From Religion Foundation revealed that Nixon arranged the breakfasts by telephone and e-mail, sending 128 e-mails since November to arrange the first six breakfasts of this year.

The foundation argued that any city time or resources spent on the prayer breakfasts were unconstitutional.

MacKenzie cited an East Point, Ga., case in which the mayor used city money to pay for prayer breakfasts and distribute fliers promoting them. The court granted an injunction against using city money but allowed minimal use of city resources, such as personal telephone calls by employees related to the events.

MacKenzie’s letter further states that Copenhaver will continue to attend the monthly breakfasts, that his staff may voluntarily attend them on their own time and that the events will remain on the city Web site, listed as Community Prayer Breakfast.

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Can't believe they gave in to these people. The "PC crowd", the "special interest crowd" and the "I don't like (insert whatever you wish here" crowd" is ruining our great nation. Grow some and call their bluff......!

If Obama is re-elected in 2012, the US is finished. The following is in simple language that everyone can understand, not the gibberish that our government keeps telling people.
Please read this carefully and make sure you keep this message going. This needs to be emailed to everyone in the USA...
By Wayne Allyn Root
Barack Hussein Obama is no fool. He is not incompetent. On the contrary, he is brilliant. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He is purposely overwhelming the U.S. economy to create systemic failure, economic crisis and social chaos – thereby destroying capitalism and our country from within. Barack Hussein Obama was my college classmate.
(Columbia University, class of '83).
He is a devout Muslim; do not be fooled. Look at his czars... Anti-business… anti-American. As Glenn Beck correctly predicted from day one, Barack Hussein Obama is following the plan of Cloward & Piven, two professors at Columbia University... they outlined a plan to socialize America by overwhelming the system with government spending and entitlement demands.
Add up the clues below. Taken individually they're alarming. Taken as a whole, it is a brilliant, Machiavellian game plan to turn the United States into a Socialist/Marxist state with a permanent majority that desperately needs government for survival... And can be counted on to always vote for even bigger government. Why not? They have no responsibility to pay for it.
Universal Health Care:
The Health Care bill has very little to do with healthcare. It has everything to do with unionizing millions of hospital and healthcare workers, as well as adding 15,000 to 20,000 new IRS agents (who will join government employee unions). Obama doesn’t care that giving free healthcare to 30 million Americans will add trillions to the national debt. What he does care about is that it cements the dependence of those 30 million voters to Democrats and big government. Who but a socialist revolutionary would pass this reckless spending bill in the middle of a depression?
Cap and Trade:
Like healthcare legislation having nothing to do with healthcare, Cap and Trade has nothing to do with global warming. It has everything to do with redistribution of income, government control of the economy and a criminal payoff to Obama’s biggest contributors. Those powerful and wealthy unions and contributors (like GE, which owns NBC, MSNBC and CNBC) can then be counted on to support everything Obama wants. They will kick-back hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions to Obama and the Democratic Party to keep them in power. The bonus is that all the new taxes on Americans with bigger cars, bigger homes and businesses helps Obama “spread the wealth around.”
Making Puerto Rico a state:
Who’s asking for a 51st state? Who’s asking for millions of new welfare recipients and government entitlement addicts in the middle of a depression? Certainly not American taxpayers! But this has been Barack Hussein Obama’s plan all along. His goal is to add two new Democrat senators, five Democrat congressmen and a million loyal Democratic voters who are dependent on big government.
(This will tip the balance of those living off the government to more than those who must pay for it; and we’re done for.)
Legalize 12 million illegal Mexican immigrants:
Just giving these 12 million potential new citizens free healthcare alone could overwhelm the system and bankrupt America. But it adds 12 million reliable new Democrat voters who can be counted on to support big government. Add another few trillion dollars in welfare, aid to dependent children, food stamps, free medical, education, tax credits for the poor, and eventually Social Security

Cobalt-I thought you would like this letter. What a snake in the grass he is.

...but these folks are right in the legal sense only. It is prudent for the Mayor to avoid spending lots of taxpayer funds to defend a suit that we would inevitably lose.
Still, I am beginning to think there are some good arguments for 21st century secession...to get Wisconsin and other northern liberals out of our hair.

Yessir, dixieman. We need a southern republic. One in which fundamentalist Christian values are reflected and reign superior to all other belief systems, one in which women are subservient to their husbands as God prescribes, and negroes are 2/3 a person, with no civil rights. Just like the founders of his great country intended.

ever heard of it?
Local government should absolutely be putting ZERO resources or money into any religion i don't care if its Christianity or Islam. To all of you complaining about this decision, would you rather of them gone to court and spent a whole bunch more of tax payer money and lost anyways?

What if this mayor breakfast was at a local mosque? i know a majority of you would by raising hell to end it.. The hypocrisy....

Pop quiz: The first Mayors Prayer Breakfast was held in the early 90's at the then named Augusta Marriott. It was hosted by the Christian Business Men's Committee. 500 people attended. Know who the speaker was?

America and its entire structure of government was founded oonChristian principles not that of any other religion. We are a
Christian republic that respects freedom of religion and does
not allow the establishment of an official state denomination.

The liberal Wisconsin groups actions are unconstitutional! The first amendment states Congress, not a City or State, shall make no law establishing a religion nor prohibiting the free excersise thereof. These Wisconsin asshats are trying to prohibit the free excersice thereof. There is NO separation of church and state anywhere in the Constitution or even the Declaration of independence. The alleged separation of Church and State was to limit The Federal Governments involment of religion because of all the King vs. The Pope issues in Europe. It was common in the early days of our Republic for a state to establish a church usung public funds(Church of Connecticut). Bottom line, these Wisconsin morons are only trying to flex their muscle on a false argument knowing people are too stupid or weak to challenge them. Stand your ground Mayor!